Open My Eyes To See As You See

Yesterday, we looked at the story of the blind man that Jesus healed.

I imagine the blind man in the Gospel story was very confused by what Jesus was doing.

He is sitting at the roadside, where his family has probably lead him every day for as long as he can remember.

He hears a crowd coming closer. He probably hears them talking about him. He pretends that he doesn't hear what they are saying.

Then he hears the familiar sound of spit being hurled his way.

Now some man is wiping something on his eyes and tells him to go wash.

There is something in the man's voice that tells him to trust this man and to do what he says.

But if nothing else he figures he needs to get this mud off his eyes. I wonder how much he actually believed this would heal him, or if he thought this man was just another crazy person.

I can imagine that when he came up from the water it was a shock to him.

The lights would have been so bright. The colors so vivid.

It was probably a blinding sight. But I doubt he would've wanted to close his eyes ever again.

The thing that struck me was that at the end of the story, Jesus turns it around and points towards the Pharisees and calls them blind. Even worse though, that they are blind, but proclaim that they are the only ones who truly see.

How easy it is for us to do the same today.

We as Christians easily slip into condemning those around us for their every wrong, but never see where we are slipping up.

We also get so blinded by our judgement of others, that we fail to see those around us who are hurting and need to feel God's love and grace.

It's easier for us to say that you are a sinner and turn away from you, than for us to get down in the dirt with you and do our best to help you up.

As I was writing this, the song Hosanna by Hillsong UNITED came on.

I think I'll end here with the bridge of that song. It says my prayer better than I can. Let this be our prayer as Christians and as a church.

"Heal my heart and make it clean

Open up my eyes to the things unseen

Show me how to love like You have loved me

Break my heart for what breaks Yours

Everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause

As I walk from earth into eternity"

Growing Up

As most of you know, I'm a stay at home dad and this little cutie is my boss.

Yesterday, we were outside and she was playing on the park by our house.

I was sitting down watching her from my bench.

She starting trying to do things that I didn't think she would be able to do. But she got right up there and did them.

I realized that I don't think of her as a four year old kid.

I think of her as my little baby girl.

Now, as a youngest child myself, I know very well that your parents will never stop seeing you as their little baby.

But at the same time, I kept hearing this voice in my head telling me to tell her to stop what she was doing, because there is no way a little baby girl should be able to climb up like that.

I had to just sit there and be quiet and watch her. I told her to be careful. But I didn't get up to hold her hand or make sure she was stable.

What I saw was a beautiful, smart, and cautiously brace little kid.

She bravely climbed as much as she could.

She took chances, but was never out of control.

She took her time and figured out how to get to the next step.

I was amazed at how grown up she has gotten, even if she didn't ask my permission to grow up.

I just need to learn to let go a little more and to let her grow up as the smart and beautiful girl she is becoming.

Forgiven much = Love much

Yesterday, during my devotions, I read the story of the woman who cried on Jesus' feet and washed them with her hair and perfume, and something hit home for me.

I realized how easy it is for us to become like the religious leader that had invited Jesus into his house.

He wanted Jesus there only to make himself look better.

For him it had nothing to do with sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from him.

He just wanted to raise his own importance and he knew that people were watching and following this man named Jesus.

So, Jesus came into his house and he didn't do any of the many things that were the normal custom of the day. He didn't wash Jesus' feet or it seems to me that he didn't even greet Him.

Some of these things seem strange to us because they aren't our customs.

But think about being invited over to some one's house, and when you enter that person is just off talking to the other people in the house. They don't come over and welcome you into their home, or offer to take your jacket or show you around.

I know that I probably wouldn't want to stay very long.

Then, this woman, who everyone in the town knows is a prostitute and whore walks in and starts touching Jesus. This is another custom that just wasn't done. Women did not touch men unless they were married.

Then she washes His feet with her with her tears and dries them with her hair. If I'm remembering right, one of the signs of her status as a sinner was to have her hair down in public. So, as she's washing Jesus' feet with her hair, she is going against all kinds of customs.

I feel like at this point the rest of the guests were probably all whispering about what was happening. Maybe they were even blaming the host. Maybe that's why he starts judging Jesus for allowing this woman to touch Him. Maybe he starts to see people gathering their things and heading for the door.

So, he starts telling people that he doesn't even think that Jesus can be a prophet if He could let a woman like this anywhere near Him.

He tries to take Jesus down and distance himself from Jesus, so that his standing among his guests isn't hurt.

One of the things that I love about the way Jesus rebukes him, is that Jesus doesn't yell. He just tells a simple parable to point out where this man has gone wrong in his judging of this woman's actions.

As one who has been forgiven much, I too often forget how big of a debt has been forgiven me.

It is at those times that I find myself sinning and falling into even deeper debt to my God.

Thank God for His endless grace and patience with us sinners.

May we learn to appreciate the debt that has been forgiven us.

He knows my every thought, and loves me still

Yesterday, we heard a sermon from Pastor Sheri about the Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well. It was a beautiful sermon about Jesus meeting us in our desperation.

This morning I started reading The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, and something he wrote really brought home something from the sermon yesterday.

Manning was talking about who Jesus came to save. He says, "He comes for corporate executives, street people, superstars, farmers, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, and even used-car salesmen."

It reminded me how Sheri pointed out that while Jesus was talking with the woman at the well, He told her everything that she had done in her life.

I think this is the truly amazing thing about Jesus. He sees who we are. He knows all of our darkest secrets. Yet He still loves us.

He doesn't turn away from us because of anything that we do.

He is always there.

He knows just who we are and what we have done.

Yet He loves us.

That truly is amazing grace.

I've had many times of desperation in my life, where I didn't see how anyone could ever love me.

The things that I had done.

The things I had thought.

The places I'd been.

No one could ever love me.

But when I look back now, I see that standing there the whole time, was Jesus.

Calling softly to me to let me know that He loves me and that He always has and always will.

Born Again

On Sunday, Pastor Jason talked about what it means to be born again.

This can be a very hard topic for some people, because just like Nicodemus, when Jesus told him that he must be born again, we don't fully understand what that really means.

How can we reenter our mother's womb after we're fully grown?

This doesn't seem like something our mothers would be willing to do.

Also, like Jason said, there has been a bad connotation that has been connected to the phrase "born again"

It can sometimes mean hateful and judgmental to those around us.

So, what do we do with the term?

Do we stop using it because some people don't understand it?

Do we try and reclaim it, and do our best to show the world that it truly means for us to be born of the Holy Spirit?

That it means we are in a sense new people with new priorities and new motives.

I believe we need to reclaim it and try our best to let the Holy Spirit show itself through our lives, that others may see Him through us, and know beyond a doubt that we are new creations.

I also had a thought during church that I don't think I'd ever thought of before.

Jesus calls us to be born again and also to live with childlike faith.

I realized that if you are to be truly born again, you will be a child again. But this time in your faith.

You won't be perfect. Most things don't change overnight.

You will slip and fall. You will miss the mark.

But luckily for us, we have a Heavenly Father that is always there to pick us up, brush us off, and help us get back on the path.

Maybe that's why Jesus uses the term born again.

He wanted to show us that we will be newborns in our faith, but that He will always be there with us.

New blog location

So, I've decided to move my blog back over to Blogger. So, this will be the new place to get my new updates.

Over the next few days, I'll be moving all my older posts over here.

Plus I've joined all of my old personal blogs into this one place.

So, you can go back a few years and see my growth as a writer.

Thank you for your support.

Dark Times With The Holy Spirit

Just a word of warning before I start this post. It might get a little dark and I may have told at least some of this story at some point in time. But I feel like I should share it again.

I just finished reading Francis Chan’s book Forgotten God. It’s a great book about the Holy Spirit.

While reading it I started remembering a certain time in my life and how, I now believe, the Holy Spirit gave me a vision that has helped keep me going all these years since then. I’ve also felt compelled to share this story here and now.

Most of you have probably heard me talk about my struggle with depression. Some might even say that I talk about it too much. But it has been one of the biggest defining this of my life so far, and I believe that God has called me to share what I’ve been through that it might help someone else.

The story I want to tell today starts on September 14th, 1999. I was in my freshman year at South Dakota State University. Most people don’t even know that I went there for a little while before going to MidAmerica Nazarene University.

I chose to go there for some not really good reasons.

I just wanted to get away from home and had heard that SDSU was a pretty good party school. I wanted to go there and be the stereotypical college kid in movies. I thought it would be parties and drinking and anything else I could get my hands onto.

But I got there and quickly found out that things aren’t always like the movies.

I was completely out of place.

Had no friends.

I found myself drowning in people and wanting to let myself drown.

I was already pretty low before going to SDSU, so I don’t want you to think that was the reason for my downward spiral. It just pushed me down even further.

For the first time I felt completely alone and helpless.

I didn’t want to go on anymore nor did I think that I could.

I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about any of this either. Which I can see now was probably mostly due to the depression isolating me more than nobody being there.

So, as I was laying in bed on Sept. 14th, I was listening to music loudly on my headphones, which was the only way I could get the voices in my head to be quiet long enough for me to go to sleep.

I looked up at the clock as it turned to midnight.

It was now the 15th.

My 19th birthday.

I didn’t feel like living anymore.

As I lay there crying in my bed as quietly as I could, so as not to disturb my roommate, whom I had only know for a couple weeks, two images flashed before my eyes.

Two images of me laying on the floor of my dorm room dead.

Not to get too graphic, but in one I had slit my wrists and the other my throat.

I lay there for a while just absorbing those images and still crying.

This next part is going to sound pretty corny, but it is truly the way it happened.

I had put the Bon Jovi CD Crossroad into my discman to listen to while trying to sleep.

While I was absorbing these images the song “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” came on.

It’s a song about being down but not out. That you may be in a bad place now, but someday you will be something bigger than what you are. I let you search for it if you want.

But as this song was playing it was like I heard a voice say, “I’m not done with you yet. Don’t give up. I’m here and I love you.”

I can’t say that my life completely changed in that moment. But I can tell you that those images have stuck with me over the last 16 years, and the voice that spoke to me that night has been with me the whole time.

The 3 months or so that I was at SDSU were some of the darkest of my life. But I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

I still feel down at times, and it’s hard to keep going some days.

But I know that God isn’t finished with me yet, and that He loves me and will never leave me.

And because of that, I keep going and try to spread my story to help other people know that they aren’t alone.

The Bible

A few weeks ago our Pastor Jason played this video for us as we started a series looking deeper at the Bible.

My first thought when the video started was that it looked remarkably like what you see in our country on Black Friday. These people obviously longed to have whatever was in those suitcases.

Then I realized that they were diving into this pile for Bibles in their language.

It made me realize just how much we as Western Christians take for granted having Bibles around. In fact I have a whole shelf of Bibles that I’ve collected over the years. But I can’t tell you the last time I actually opened one of them.

Part of this has to do with now having the Bible App on my phone and so I have the Bible with me every where I go.

But still, I’ve got a shelf full of Bibles that are just collecting dust, and there are people who would die to have just one in their language to read.

It also brought to mind a story for a few years back when I worked at Borders in Kansas.

A young man and woman walked up to me and asked politely if we had the Koran.

So I took them over to the religion section and showed him where the few that we kept in stock were.

I was amazed at what he did next.

He pulled one off the shelf and quietly said a prayer and kiss the cover of the Koran.

I stood there shocked for a moment, then after making sure he didn’t need more help I went back to whatever I was doing.

But I kept going over what I had just seen in my mind.

This man said a prayer and kiss the Koran before even opening it.

I don’t know that I’ve ever shown that kind of reverence towards the Bible.

It hurt me to think of this, because when I see how much others care about the Bible or the Koran, it just brings to light how little respect I show to the gift that God has given me.

Like most times I don’t really have any answers or ways to make this better.

But maybe now instead of just pulling the Bible up on my phone, I’ll actually take one off the shelf. Dust it off. Say a prayer that God would speak to me through His words. Open it up and read it.